Strains of doubt began filtering into the dialogue on the right early Monday morning, shortly after Donald Trumptweeted that America was partially to blame for the rocky relationship between the U.S. and Russia. “That’s by far the most ridiculous tweet of late,” host Brian Kilmeade said on Fox & Friends, noting that this was the day that Trump was scheduled to meet with Vladimir Putin. “That is insulting to past administrations—he can’t be saying that going into the Russian summit.” Kilmeade’s criticism was fairly unusual—Fox is a safe space for the president, offering him heaping piles of praise punctuated by few rebukes. But as the summit wore on, and Trump dispelled any notion that he might stand up to the Russian president, drawing into question the very notion that Russia had meddled in the election at all, even Republicans who’d historically stood by the president as a bastion of the party were aghast. “I had really hoped that I could say [the mainstream media] were wrong,” Fox Business’s Trish Regan said, seemingly furious that Trump hadn’t taken the “opportunity” to stand up to Putin. “He basically said he didn’t buy what his own intelligence community was telling him. . . . He should have defended us! He should have defended his own intelligence community. Or just don’t take the meeting! Don’t go to Helsinki if you can’t look the guy in the eye and tell him what’s what!”

Regan was joined by a whole array of voices, ranging from the usual suspects—Senator John McCain issued a blistering statement calling the summit “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in history”—to less likely figures. This group—stretching from politicians like Trey Gowdy, Paul Ryan, and Marco Rubio, to commentators like Ben Shapiro and Neil Cavuto—had occasionally criticized the president, but had stuck by him, largely in defiance of the media and the Democratic party. By and large, they found Trump’s performance, wherein he openly dismissed the concerns of his national-intelligence community, caved to Putin, and blamed America for chilling a relationship beset by Russian sabotage, to be unacceptable. “I just found that Vladimir Putin appeared to run circles around the president and got him to buy . . . hook line and sinker . . . every single sneaky lie and misstatement he has made on this matter,” Cavuto said. Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, added that “Vladimir Putin ruthlessly persecutes those who preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, holds orphans hostage from waiting families for his political purposes, murders dissidents and journalists, attacks democratic institutions and nations. Morality is not relative.” Shapiro found a scapegoat for Trump’s lapse, but dragged his remarks all the same:

Some were subtler: Matt Drudgeplaced “PUTIN DOMINATES IN HEL” front and center on his home page, linking to a Daily Mailarticle calling the conference “bizarre.” But in one of the day’s more dramatic displays, Joe Walsh, who was elected to Congress during the initial Tea Party wave and is now a conservative radio host, permanently broke with Trump in a long tweet thread. “What Trump did today was commit treason,” he wrote. “He cannot be supported anymore. He is a clear & present danger to America. Republicans can no longer be quiet. I won’t be quiet. I am done with him.”

A few on the right, such as the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, tried to thread the needle between condemning the president’s behavior and dragging the left for its hysterics. “POTUS should have said Putin strongly denies the claim of Russian meddling, but that it happened on Obama’s watch and Putin should make sure it doesn’t happen in years to come or there will be more repercussions,” Hemingway tweeted. Indeed, a similar strand of doublethink seemed to be at play at other right-wing sites, where headlines skirted around Trump’s wishy-washy display to focus instead on the liberals he’d infuriated. The front pages of r/The_Donald were ablaze with posts mocking the deluge of “fresh, tasty liberal tears,” while Breitbart played up Putin’s references to popular right-wing conspiracy theories, from Hillary Clinton’s e-mail servers, to the well-trod tale that billionaire George Soros was attempting to influence American democracy. “He’s the one spending tens of billions per election!” effused Alex Jones, a primary Soros accuser, while “New Right” provocateur Laura Loomer said she was “seriously impressed by his chutzpah.”

As the hours wore on, however, pro-Trump talking points—perhaps he’s playing three-dimensional chess!—began to filter back onto Fox. “You have to view what he’s saying outside the room as a P.R. campaign by the president to send a message to Vladimir Putin,” suggested Fox’s Melissa Francis. “We don't know what happened inside the room, we don’t know how tough he was there.” The president isn’t scheduled to touch down in Washington until later tonight. But by the time he does, the new rift exposed in the right may very well have fused again.